India’s government should oppose a U.S. government crackdown on the 150,000 Indian drivers in the U.S. trucking industry, said an Indian politician whose district includes many of the drivers’ families.
Harsimrat Kaur Badal represents a district in the Punjab region, which is home to many members of the Sikh ethnic group who work illegally or legally in the U.S. trucking industry. They include the Indian truck driver, Harjinder Singh, who is facing homicide charges after killing three Americans in a turnpike U-turn.
Badal was formerly a cabinet minister in India’s federal government, and used Twitter to ask India’s foreign minister to intervene in U.S. politics to protect the Sikh truck drivers:
More than [150,000] Punjabi truck drivers in the US shud not be discriminated against due to Harjinder [Singh]’s mistake & their livelihood shud not be snatched from them by denying them work visas & making it more difficult for them to drive [U.S.] trucks by bringing in new language proficiency rules.
A crackdown would “have a detrimental effect on [the left-behind] families” in India that depend on the wage remittances sent home by Indian migrants, said Badal, who is a Sikh.
The crackdown is being prompted by public protests about highway deaths and economic damage caused by the growing use of overworked, underpaid, unsupervised, dangerous, and unprofessional foreign truckers on U.S. roads.
Sikhs are a distinct religious and ethnic group in northeastern India that emerged in the 1700s. Sikh men can be recognized by their distinctive turbans that cover their uncut hair. Some Sikhs are pushing for an independent nation-state in the Punjab region, to be called Khalistan.
The Florida incident prompted an uproar among Indians and Sikhs eager to defend the Indian truck driver — and many complaints from some Indian Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus about the Sikh community.
More than 2.5 million people, including many Sikhs, have signed an online petition asking Gov. Ron De Santis (R-FL) — not the judge — to “consider alternative sentencing measures — such as restorative justice, counseling, or community service — that uphold responsibility while also fostering compassion and true rehabilitation.”
Many of the illegal migrant Indians are “wire-transfer migrants,” said Jay Palmer, a consultant who works with many Indian immigrants. “They come over here, they make their money, and they live 7-8 to a room, they sleep in their 18-wheelers, … and they wire their money back to India,” Palmer told Breitbart News.
WATCH — Sanctuary States Kill Americans:
The Indian Express reported on August 24 that the driver had expected to return home to India “in around two years”:
Harjinder’s friend Gursewak Singh said, “He did not go to the US out of necessity but, like many young men, to build a better life. When we last spoke, about 10–15 days before this incident, he told me he planned to return to India in around two years.”
“He first went to Dubai and from there to Nicaragua. His [coyote] agent was good and he didn’t face much trouble in reaching Mexico by road, from where he crossed over to the US. It took him around one-and-a-half months. He was earning good money,” said Gursewak.
Badal claimed 150,000 Indians are working in the trucking sector. The number is likely inflated, but their role is spreading out from truck cabs, said Palmer. For example, many of the Indian trucks carry additional people to serve as drivers when the primary driver needs to sleep. The trucks sometimes carry additional crews to load and unload cargo at warehouses, Palmer added.
The imported issue is also prominent in Canadian politics.
The wire-transfer migrants will work for low wages because “$1 here is worth $50 over in India,” said Palmer
The use of illegal Sikh wire-transfer migrants is very profitable for Sikh-run trucking companies, he added. But those profits are also silently shared with established U.S firms that hire them to move goods between factories, warehouses, retailers, and customers, he said, adding that “companies like Target and Costco are fueling the abuse in the name of profit.”
The wire-transfer migrants are also profitable for India’s government. In 2024, India received roughly $37 billion from the expansion of Indian networks in the U.S. trucking, hotel, retail, and tech sectors.
Democrats tolerate the abuse of working Americans because “they think they’re champions of the little guy …. [but] they’re hoping that some of these migrants, if they support these people or they don’t deport them … one day they’ll vote Democrat.”
Media outlets rarely cover the use of migrants in the trucking industry. However, a 2017 article by USA Today focused on the abuse of drivers working at major ports:
No law requires retail companies to police their vendors or the subcontractors those vendors hire. And unlike with overseas manufacturing plants, there has been no public pressure to force a cleanup of the shipping industry.
That makes it easy for the companies to look the other way, said David Weil, who led the federal Wage and Hour Division under President Obama.
“Not my problem, not my workforce,” said Weil.
Progressives are unlikely to change their minds about the labor abuse, he said, “until something happens under their roof or to their families — an Illegal trucker runs into somebody in their family — that is all that’s going to do that.”
GOP politicians choose to believe that there are not enough Americans willing to take trucker jobs, said Palmer. “Somehow, these politicians believe there’s a labor shortage, that there’s not enough Americans to do the jobs,” he said. But American drivers need decent pay for housing, families, food, and retirement, he said. “The average American can’t work for $10-12 per hour — that’s what it all comes down to.”
To stop the abuse, Secretary of State Marco Rubio should clamp down on the award of B-1/B-2 tourist visas to Indians, said Palmer.
There is much evidence that many Indians use B-1/B-2 visas to take short-term jobs offered by U.S.-based Indians, including Indians who hold E-2 franchise investor visas. The migrants send the money home and often hope to return with enough savings to buy a home in their familiar India.
The growing archipelago of Indian business in the United States excludes many Americans from starter jobs or from franchise opportunities — and also enables Indian-style tax evasion, fraud, and criminality.
So far, Rubio has only blocked the smaller inflow of legalized H-2B, E-2, and E-B3 migrants into the U.S. trucking industry. The Department of Homeland Security has not curbed the many work permits granted to Indian illegal migrants by President Joe Biden’s deputies. Mexican drivers with B-1/B-2 visas are not affected.
The U-turn crash has also caused splits among Indian communities in the United States, especially among Indian Hindus who denounce Sikh nationalism.
Some Sikhs are blaming the Sikh driver for the deaths — but are also blaming the widespread criticism on supposed American racism.
In reality, the new federal oversight is driven by the growing public opposition to the damage caused by the long-standing federal economic policy of Extraction Migration.
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